


Twelve Winds

by princewardo



Category: The Social Network (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Thor, Car Accidents, Gen, Hurricanes & Typhoons, M/M, Storm Chasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 04:53:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29344665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princewardo/pseuds/princewardo
Summary: Divya wouldn’t call them storm chasers. Eduardo might. Either way, they’re a trio of meteorologists on the run from the biggest hurricane they’ve ever tracked.[thunderstorm fill for The Prompt Network]
Relationships: Divya Narendra/Cameron Winklevoss, Eduardo Saverin/Mark Zuckerberg
Comments: 14
Kudos: 16
Collections: The Prompt Network





	Twelve Winds

**Author's Note:**

> My fill for the first round of The Prompt Network! I’ve chosen to go with the option of thunderstorm.
> 
> The works so far have been amazing and I can’t wait for the next round!!!
> 
> Thank you to my TSN community and all those around me who hear me complain literally non-stop 24/7. Thank you!

Divya is like a cat, Eduardo thinks. Sleek, proud, prickly, likely to bite at the slightest offence. He also really hates getting caught in the rain, so it’s a bit of a mystery as to why he keeps agreeing to accompany Eduardo and Alice into the field. 

Nonetheless, Divya is out in the gale, his teeth visibly gritted as he clings to the roof rack with one hand, the other white knuckled around the base of their stock-standard retractable lightning rod. 

Eduardo tapes the electrics connections together with huge jagged loops of duct tape, throwing each snaking length into the door well as he goes. 

The monitor laptop is making extremely concerning squawks but he already knows exactly what it’s going to display - proximity warning, lightning warning, gale warning, a civil defence evacuation warning. 

There’s a dud tone sounding underneath it all too, a reading entirely reliant on the unlikely and ridiculous chance that Eduardo and Divya manage to snap their shit together in the middle of this storm. Because why not collect data _and_ die trying?

The in-house storm software is picking up at least three likely tornado events within half a mile. Eduardo doesn’t need to check the warnings because he can _see_ them actually, with the naked eye. The twisters are practically converging on their vehicle.

“Alice…” Eduardo says, bottom lip clamped painfully between his teeth. 

He holds the last two plugs in each hand, juggling the laptop and his wind goggles in the crook of one arm. Eduardo’s other elbow is tucked just under the door lever. Alice warned him to be poised to tuck and roll for his life, should they start attracting static.

“You’re ready?” Alice says, voice improbably calm for someone wrenching a five ton truck through a wheat field in a 150 mile/hr gale. It would be unbelievable even without the added horror of having Divya half splayed across their windshield. 

“Yes,” Eduardo said immediately, primed for her next direction. 

“Nice work. We’re waiting on Div, now.”

Alice doesn’t even look over to check his tape work, and Eduardo has to swallow the urge to ask her to - at this point it probably doesn’t matter how well he has tethered the cabling. When you get this deep in a storm, you will take a strike, without a doubt. It’s all down to _when_.

It’s just incredible, Eduardo thinks, eyes drawn again and again to the dark giants juddering and undulating across the plains alongside them. Incredible how humans will desperately chase time, down to the measly minute, in the face of an insurmountable natural enemy.

Divya finally pounds on the hood with his foot. He’s yelling, but they can’t hear him over the screaming wind. 

Eduardo knows what he’s saying though - it could only be one thing - they’d agreed he would hurl the rod, whether or not their patch job worked. It could give them seconds - and a shit load of groundbreaking data. 

Alice set her shoulders, jerking her head at Eduardo. “Give him the signal. I’m probably going to dislocate at least one arm going this, so try not to fall out, please.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Eduardo said, and he threw Divya a big thumbs up. Then he slapped his goggles on and let the laptop slide sideways into the seat beside him as he prepared to sync up with Divya. 

Divya kicked around until he got a foothold on the side of Alice’s door. They could hear him dragging the rod across the roof, no doubt completely fucking the complicated system of instruments the entire lab had spent the last fortnight installing and tweaking.

The rod bobbed into sight through the dash, the blunt end improbably distant. It quavered wildly up and down, thunking occasionally against the metal roof above them.

They hit a furrow in the field, jerking them all into the air, rod smacking down so far that Eduardo thought it might stick in the earth ahead of them and flip them like a javelin, truck and all. 

Alice swore very quietly under her breath, hunching white knuckled over the steering column. She started whispering to herself, hauling the wheel around. Eduardo couldn’t tell whether she was swearing or praying, but he’d be happy with whatever worked.

Divya rapped on the window and Eduardo whipped his head around to meet his eyes through Alice’s window. He gave Divya a nod and watched, mouth dry as Divya leaned out into the storm. 

The wind swept Divya’s hair around in circles, creating accidental cowlicks and lovers' locks that lasted less than a second on his stern forehead. 

Eduardo had no idea how he did it, but supposed he could chalk it up to Divya participating in college sports. Divya wound up, a little like a baseball player. As another thankfully distant fork of lightning lit up the horizon, Eduardo couldn’t help but think of the baseball scene in Twilight, a thought he certainly wouldn’t be repeating if they survived this. 

Somehow, Divya threw his upper body forward and sent with it the lighting rod. The long body grazed over the top of the truck, vibrating as the wind lifted it. 

Eduardo slammed together the two plugs he’d prepared, and elbowed his door open. The wind caught it easily, flinging it so wide the hinges groaned. The cable in the footwell, free of Eduardo’s hold, whipped out after the rod it was fastened to, running so fast it hummed against the lip of the door.

This was very much _not_ warranty approved use of equipment, but nor was providing practical problem solving in a hurricane likely to be covered by Divya’s job description.

He clambered back around the truck, newly nimble in the face of his success.

He vaulted in through Eduardo’s open door like it was nothing. Eduardo threw his hands up to catch him, but got nothing for his trouble but his own localised rain shower as Divya shook himself like a cat. 

“It stuck!” Divya was near screaming, “I saw it dig in clean - at a bit of a 70 degree angle, but it stuck!”

“Sit down,” Alice shouted back, “and shut up. A lightning rod won’t save you from the suction force if we brush against a twister.”

Divya laughed, sarcastic and too loud - his hearing would probably be in and out for the next ten hours. 

Eduardo glanced around Divya’s rain slicked head at the flapping door beside them. Their pet experiment was still unravelling in silvery loops of cabling.

“We haven’t dropped the box yet,” he told Alice. 

“I know,” she said. “Trust me, you’ll feel it when we do. Or not feel anything ever again, I guess. The lightning pattern is getting closer.”

Divya squirmed between them into the back seat. He rolled his wrists and started stripping off his goggles and his sopping button-up. 

As if he’d simply popped out to tighten a loose bolt instead of literally constructing and manually deploying a portable lightning rod in the middle of a hurricane.

“Is this really work appropriate?” Eduardo shouted. “Do you want to borrow my North Face?” he grinned at Divya via the rear view mirror.

“No, thank you, Saverin. I’m not wading into your natural disaster of a love life,” Divya yelled back over the wind. “Concentrate on getting that door shut.” 

He leaned forward and nabbed the laptop Eduardo was practically sitting on.

“Die naked then,” Eduardo shouted back. “Also don’t muck up the weather filters in the tracking program. Mar- I took hours to get them how I like them.”

“I’m sick of this,” Alice complained loudly. “The two of you are _never_ coming with me into the field, _ever again_.”

“Oh, you’d miss us,” Divya grinned. “And you can’t tell me you’d rather have Mark and Christy breathing down your neck.”

Alice shuddered, scrunching up her nose.

+++

Strictly speaking, neither Divya nor Eduardo needed to be onsite. Eduardo could just as accurately visualise weather patterns from his desk, and probably have a far better eye on the skies via satellite arrays. But that would involve talking to Mark to get it all nicely triangulated on his desktop PC and Eduardo was just. Not prepared to go there again quite yet.

Alice played up to her techie job title and her community college degree, but Eduardo has read her thesis on storm intensification patterns. He is probably one of maybe thirty people in the meteorology world who will bother to, and that is a crime in itself. 

Midway through, he’d had to pause to order in pity pizza for one and choke down some serious academic humble pie. 

Then he’d forwarded it to Divya and their project lead Christy, because it wasn’t fair he cry alone.

+++

The truck bounced a little higher off of the next ridge.

Alice may have cobbled together their survival plan on the fucking fly, but, right on time, they heard a hollow thunk from practically under Eduardo’s ass. 

“There it goes!” Eduardo said, in utter disbelief. 

He tucked his elbows in and braced as Alice swerved neatly, jackknifing just sharply enough to slam the battered door.

“Nicely done,” Divya said, loud in the comparative silence of their newly enclosed cabin. “Bet that door never opens again.”

“I don’t care, I’ll climb out the window,” Eduardo said, removing his wind goggles, completely distracted by the lightning cracking the sky above the dash. 

They bounded over another in the endless series of furrows, mowing down green stalks with impunity. 

“It’s getting a lot closer,” Alice said, voicing Eduardo’s silent concern. “The pattern is strange, but whatever formation it is, the frequency is double, maybe triple what we might expect in this area in tornado season.”

“And it’s not tornado season,” Eduardo swallowed. “We might have to lodge a natural disaster report with FEMA.”

“There’s a lot of lightning,” Divya agreed conversationally. “I guess. But I can tell you that the box _is_ reporting back, and the rod has apparently been struck over eighty times since I yeeted it.”

“Eighty!” Eduardo yelped, twisting in his seat to tear the laptop out of Divya’s hands. 

“You better believe it,” Divya nodded. 

“Shit,” Eduardo said, flipping through his windows. “I haven’t seen storm data like this since college, when we were studying-”

“-Bay of Bengal,” they all chorused in time.

“Yeah,” Eduardo said, smiling faintly.

They bunny-hopped over another tooth rattling ridge and the sky lit up around them.

“What the hell is th-” Alice started, in wonder, before she was drowned out by a crack of thunder. It rolled on and on and on, and the sky remained lit up throughout. The fields around them appeared as bright and clearly visible as a summer's day, despite the thick oppressive clouds smothering the sky.

Eduardo could have picked out a ladybug on a wheat stalk twenty feet away with this kind of visibility.

Then it ended, plummeting them back into the dim grey world, ears ringing. Eduardo blinked, swallowing to try to clear his tinnitus. 

That was when everything was very suddenly upside down. Then the right way up, and upside down again. They’d rolled, he realised faintly, elbows around his ears. It seemed to go on for a while but he only counted three of four inversions before they came to rest on their left side.

“Divya?” Eduardo said, once his heart had slid out of his throat. “Alice?”

“Yeah,” came an answer from the backseat. “I’m fine, I grabbed the handhold and the computer.” Divya laughed in disbelief. “I’ll try the door.”

“Alice?” Eduardo said again, almost too afraid to peer down at the driver's seat. 

“I’m good, I’m fine,” Alice muttered, to Eduardo’s relief. 

“Whiplash is a bitch,” she groaned, unbuckling her seatbelt. “Wanna try your door?”

Eduardo braced one foot under his seat and gave his door a heave. “It’s definitely fucked,” he said. “I’ll try the window.” It wouldn’t wind either. The LEDS in the dashboard weren’t even lit up.

“Okay then,” Eduardo said very calmly. “It’s all on you, Div.”

“Haha,” Divya said, out of breath from scrambling around the backseat. “Give me a second.”

He rattled around a bit, grunting and kicking at the seats. “This is a bit weird,” he said, now effectively standing upright as gravity dictated, while Eduardo and Alice remained slumped at a 90 degree offset angle.

Divya hefted his door upwards and ducked back in, making a pleased sound as the door hinge over-extended and settled, flooding the truck with the wet scent of freshly cut vegetation.

“Looks like this planet has a breathable atmosphere,” he said, half joking, “I’m going to investigate.” He clambered out carefully.

Eduardo and Alice waved weakly through the windshield when they saw him jog around to check the hood of the wreck, still incongruously shirtless against the grey horizon.

His dark head popped up over the open door again.

“Right, take your time. The damage is minimal. We might even be able to flip it over.”

“Amazing!” Eduardo said, relieved. “Alice, you go first. I don’t want to drop into you when I unbuckle.”

Alice nodded and started wriggling over the console, rolling her shoulders slowly every few seconds.

Eduardo waited for her to slither over the edge and then he followed her out.

The air was bracing, thick with a prickling static. There was a faint ozone odour, but the scent of the crushed plants were far sharper in the nose.

Eduardo looked back at the truck, and remembered hauling ass to get it packed with two people carrying each piece of equipment. 

“There’s just no way we’re lifting that,” he said, resigning himself to a long wet walk.

Alice had sat herself down in a heap of wind swept wheat, ignoring how it soaked through the seat of her pants. 

Divya was poking at her shoulder gingerly. 

“Wardo, you wanna handle this part?” he said, looking up as he heard Eduardo’s feet crunch into the wheat. 

“I told you I’d dislocate it,” Alice told him, somehow both wincing and grinning at the same time. 

Eduardo double-timed it over just to slap Divya’s hand away before he could curiously prod Alice’s dangling limb again. “I don’t remember seeing you at the first aid refresher,” he said.

Divya made a face at him. “I’m just sorry I missed seeing you panic and pass out when they shot Mark with the fake blood squib.” 

“It was an unnecessary and tasteless display,” Eduardo muttered, helping Alice out of her jacket. 

“Uh huh,” Divya said, watching carefully as Eduardo did in fact demonstrate a textbook-perfect shoulder relocation.

Alice bore the pain without so much as a peep.

“Oh wow. I know I’m crying, but honestly, that feels so much better,” Alice said, using the back of her hand to wipe tears out of her eyes. “Thank you, Wardo.” 

She rubbed a smear of blood out of her eyebrow too, wrinkling her nose at it and wiping it on her shirt front. 

“Oh no,” Divya said, fascinated.

Eduardo turned on his heel, pale, and dove back into the truck to retrieve the first aid kit.

“It’s just a scratch,” Alice called after him, exasperated. “I’m not about to bleed out, Wardo.”

“Please sit down,” Eduardo yelled back. “Keep your head up! Compress the injury site!”

Divya stood back, surveying their still slowly spinning rear wheels. “Christy is going to send out search and rescue to recover our bodies just so she can kill us again.”

“That would be charitable of her,” Alice smiled up at him, and then did a double take, seemingly noticing his state of undress for the first time. “Do you, uh, do you wanna wear my jacket? It’s kind of cold out.”

She pushed it into his free hand, leaving no room for refusal.

Divya huffed out a laugh, then jumped when he was interrupted by a bleep from the laptop he’d kept safely crushed against his bare chest.

“Do we still have a satellite connection?” Alice asked, quickly wiping another trickle of blood out of her eye. “We might be close to a highway or farmhouse.”

“Hm,” Divya said, dropping down to sit on his heels next to her to check. He threw the jacket over one shoulder for the time being.

“Um. Alice. Div?” Eduardo called out from the inside of the truck. 

“What?” Divya yelled back, still scrolling through data still rolling in from the truck’s array. He couldn’t make heads nor tails of it.

Eduardo had been steamrollered into agreeing to let Mark set up some freaky data scientist customisations. One of them would have to pull the data and transform it from their gross little secret data language into something resembling standard data visualisation.

But even taking into account the nearly incoherent program setup, the numbers were strange. And despite the tornadoes dispersing and the storm having seemingly blown over - they were still picking up bizarre readings. 

He looked out over the fields. They were a disaster scene on their own, vegetation crushed nearly flat in places, and crops torn from the earth and heaped up in others. He hoped this farmer had insurance. 

The lightning rod was nowhere in sight, and the box wasn’t reporting back any longer. Probably shattered across a mile of wheat spikes or carried away by the wind by now.

“Divya,” Eduardo yelled again. “Now? Please?”

Divya heaved himself up and wandered over, the sharp ridge of the laptop still tucked under his ribs. 

Eduardo was on the far side of the truck, kneeling in the shadow of the oily underside. He’d found the first aid case and had it flipped open beside him. He’d also found another patient. 

“Holy fuck,” Divya said, fumbling the laptop. “Holy _fuck_. Should I activate the emergency beacon?”

“I don’t know,” Eduardo said, terrified.

The man was curled up on his side in the churned up earth and debris, nearly cuddled up against the body of the truck where it rested on its side. He was at least six foot five, possibly blonde, well muscled and absolutely naked. 

“Alice might know what to do,” Eduardo said, and yelled for her again.

“Why would Alice know - whatever. Have you uh, tried poking him?” Divya asked, trying and failing not to stare at the bare, well muscled, and possibly _deceased_ ass.

“I can try.” Eduardo said. He sucked in a breath and poked the man quickly, barely denting the flesh of his broad shoulder. 

“Fuck,” Divya said again. Alice came around the side of the truck, with a resigned look on her face. She stopped short and took in their tableau. 

“This is some Caravaggio shit,” she muttered under her breath.

“Oh, you took art history too?” Eduardo said, his voice helpless.

“That’s a body,” Alice said, only slightly green around the gills.

“Well, he _might_ be alive,” Eduardo said. He reached out gingerly towards the giant’s neck, hoping he could remember how to take a pulse

“How the hell are you so okay with this, but not that?” Divya demanded, pointing at the barely there trickle of blood on Alice’s forehead.

Eduardo wrinkled his nose, refusing to look. He nudged the first aid kit behind him. “He has his insides on the inside. I like that. Bandage Alice’s head, please, Div.” 

Alice rolled her eyes and slapped a bandaid over her eyebrow before Divya could start another fight about it. “It’s done; my brain is safe and sound.” 

“So, is he dead?” Divya said instead, leaning over Eduardo’s shoulder. 

Eduardo yelped. “No!” 

He pulled his hand back as the huge man began to turn under his touch, groaning. 

“He’s definitely alive,” Eduardo said, pulling back nervously to make sure their mystery man could get some air.

Divya, intractably curious, leaned in to peer at their enormous patient as he showed his face. It was difficult at first - the light was weak and shadowy behind the truck, and the man had engine oil and mud all over his face.

Suddenly, Divya froze and dropped a heavy hand on Eduardo’s back, fingertips digging into the fleece of his jacket with a nearly painful grip. His entire posture changed in the blink of an eye. “Tyler?”

Eduardo looked back over his shoulder at him, eyebrows nearly in his hairline, then back to the maybe-not-a-stranger.

“You know this guy?” Alice interjected, her eyes flicking between the three of them in disbelief.

“Good morning?” the man rasped, deep voiced. He was well spoken, with a timbre Eduardo vividly associated with his former Harvard peers and, well, Divya. 

He made to sit up and they all shouted in objection, hands raised defensively. He lay back down in the mud obediently.

“Just - stay still for a second,” Eduardo said. “You were out in a hurricane and then - I guess - you were hit by a truck?” He sounded incredulous even to his own ears.

“Yes, I remember the storm,” the man said. He smiled too pleasantly for someone who _really_ needed to consider wearing clothes in public, if only to avoid taking someone’s eye out. 

“A truck,” he said, craning his head slowly until he caught sight of the vehicle towering above him. “Ah! I see how this might have knocked me down.” 

Eduardo and Alice looked at one another, incredulous. 

Divya was just frozen, the strangest look on his face. He was clutching the laptop again like a security blanket, and the sleeves of Alice’s zip up were dangling sadly in the mud.

“Hi! I’m Alice. Just wondering - what happened to your clothes?” Alice said abruptly. 

The man looked down at himself and laughed suddenly. “Apologies! This happens sometimes when you’re crossing the vast oceans of time.”

“Alright,” Alice said, though it was clear by her tone that she did not consider this to be an ‘alright’ answer. “Do you know Divya?”

She pointed at Divya with her good arm, and the man’s eyes followed her motion, landing on Divya’s ashen face. 

The man assessed Divya from head to toe, eyes dawdling only momentarily over his bare chest. He shook his head. “I am afraid not, my lady. But I am sure I would like to make his acquaintance, as well as your own and that of your kind friend beside me.”

Eduardo jumped back a little at this direct address. “Eduardo Saverin,” he said, automatically putting his right hand out. 

“Greetings to you, Master Saverin. You have the manner of a healer,” the man said to Eduardo, eyes curious. “I assure you that I am uninjured. Might I sit up now?”

“Oh, oh, of course,” Eduardo mumbled, dropping his hand. He scooted back even further.

The man got up quite easily, his movements almost energetic as he climbed to his full height.

Divya found his tongue and stepped forward, averting his eyes politely. “Here,” he said, suddenly remembering the zip up over his shoulder. Alice grimaced slightly as it became a makeshift loincloth.

“Many thanks,” the man said, tying a knot securely at his hip.

“I’m sure I do know you, actually,” Divya said hesitantly. “You’re Tyler Winklevoss. We went to school together.”

Maybe-Tyler looked down at him sharply, eyes wide. 

“I am not so lucky as he, it seems,” he said, voice soft. “But I believe you have the acquaintance of my long lost brother.”

“Tyler has an identical twin?” Divya said numbly. 

“My name is Cameron,” he said, striding forward to carefully take Divya’s free hand between his own muddy palms. “The Fates have brought us together, young lord.”

“Oh-kay,” Eduardo said loudly, packing up the first aid kit with a clatter. “Did anyone figure out which way we should walk?”

Divya shook himself, extracting his hand from Cameron’s huge mitts. “There’s a farm road running through the fields to our east. Maybe an hour of walking.”

Alice sighed, rolling her bad shoulder experimentally. “I hate walking.”

Cameron looked askance at them. “Why would you walk, when you have a vehicle?”

Alice flapped her hand at the truck. “It weighs at least 7,000 pounds. There’s no way we can flip it without a tow.”

“If you’d allow me to take a look?” Cameron asked, already circling the truck.

Divya watched him go, berating himself even as he watched Cameron’s creamy tree-trunk thighs flex.

Alice shrugged, exchanging a look with Eduardo. “I don’t know about this guy,” she said under her breath. “It’s all a bit strange.”

“The Divya stuff especially,” Eduardo muttered.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Divya said, swinging around to glare at him. 

“Nothing, my lord,” Eduardo said. “I am naught but a peasant healer, peddling my herbs and tinctures.”

Alice snorted and then nearly choked as she watched Cameron literally roll the truck back onto its wheels before her eyes.

“Will this suffice?” Cameron asked, leisurely brushing a little mud off the dented hood. “Would it suit you better to place it elsewhere, in another direction?” 

“That’s - no, that’s good,” Alice said weakly. “Thank you.”

It started raining, cool and directly downward, which freaked Eduardo out more than anything. “This weather isn’t right,” he muttered, prying his laptop out of Divya’s frozen grip.

“Well. Guess we have no reason not to try to start it.” Alice said. “Would you mind, uh,” She waved her good hand at the doors. 

“Oh, certainly. No problem,” Cameron said, walking around the truck and wrenching them easily off of their hinges. “Would you like them lashed on top?” He stacked all four neatly on top of each other in the dirt. 

“No, thank you,” Alice said, staggering over to the driver’s side. 

It started, much to Alice’s apparent amazement and relief. The electronics seemed to be “completely borked” - Alice’s technical term - but it was mechanically sound.

They clambered into the well ventilated truck, Divya at the wheel, doing his best to keep his eyes on the muddy field ahead of him and not the hulking, nearly naked doppelgänger of his Harvard roommate folded into the seat beside him. 

Eduardo and Alice sat primly in the back seat, conspicuously silent. Divya could feel their curious eyes pricking back and forth between him and Cameron.

Divya sighed after a solid fifteen minutes of heavy silence. 

Cameron cleared his throat. 

“What is it that you...do in the fields?” he asked politely. “Are you farmers?”

“No,” Divya said, trying not to smile at the thought. “Eduardo’s a meteorologist. I’m a data scientist.”

“Mechanical engineer, I minored in climate science.” Alice volunteered.

“We study the weather.” Eduardo explained, leaning forward to point out the silver glint of a gravel road coming up ahead of them.

“Our company collects weather data and makes predictions for crops and tourism, the government, hedge funds. All kinds of businesses want to know more about the climate.” 

“Oh,” Cameron said, clearly no closer to understanding their work. “The weather has always been rather straightforward to me. I am in wonder that you find it interesting enough to go to such lengths.” 

“Sure.” Eduardo said, shortly. 

Divya twisted around to check his blind spot rather thoroughly so that neither Eduardo nor Cameron would see he was suppressing a cackle.

“And you are a matched set?” Cameron asked, and Divya turned back automatically to stare at Cameron.

Matched sets. That was exactly how Tyler had always joked about their coupled up acquaintances and their married professors. 

“Lady Alice and yourself?” Cameron asked Eduardo, “or perhaps a different kind of arrangement,” he said carefully, leaving enough room between his words to assume he was open-minded, indeed. He seemed to be studiously avoiding Divya’s wide-eyed stare of disbelief.

Eduardo choked back a laugh and Alice set upon him, punching him viciously in the ribs over and over again. 

“Oh, no, no, no,” Eduardo said, both to Cameron and Alice. “Stop stabbing me with your pointy little fist!” 

She let him alone, and turned haughtily to Cameron. 

“There are absolutely no _arrangements_ in my truck, thank you,” she said. “Although I’d be remiss if I didn’t warn you that Eduardo is preoccupied with feuding with our software engineer. I wouldn’t recommend interfering.” 

“Mark is a dick. It’s an absolute mess,” Divya had to break his silence to agree. 

“Oh, shut up,” Eduardo snapped, sitting back as they crunched onto the metal road. 

“Thank you for your candour,” Cameron said to Alice.

They drive on in relative quiet, Eduardo occasionally using his laptop to direct Divya towards the nearest map point that promised civilisation.

+++

Civilisation was a grimy truck stop, as it turned out.

“Did anyone else bring spare clothes?” Eduardo said, averting his eyes as Cameron squeezed out of the passenger seat, makeshift loincloth riding up to flash a shapely buttock. “I did but I’m pretty sure my jeans will be... too small for him.” 

Alice glared at him. “What size do you think I wear, dummy?” 

Eduardo lifted his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry, but everything’s a bit - distracting today?” He glanced out the window and lifted his eyebrows. “Uh, Div, Cameron is - I’m not sure exactly - is he tasting that puddle?”

Divya swore and slid out of the truck, circling Cameron and encouraging him back towards the truck like a sheepdog. 

“Midwesterners don’t appreciate six foot tall nude men wandering their carparks,” Divya explained, guiding Cameron to sit on the edge of the tailgate. 

An eighteen-wheeler chose this moment to barrel past, the driver leaning on the horn appreciatively.

“Usually.” Divya amended. “Usually...” 

“Maybe I did get hit by lightning out there,” Eduardo said. He checked the ends of his hair for singeing.

“You’re probably just in shock,” Alice took pity on Eduardo. “Believe it or not, some people consider driving through a hurricane a traumatic experience. Not necessarily me, but people do.”

“Whoa - I’m getting service,” Eduardo said, fishing his phone out of his pocket as it began to chime incessantly.

“Hello, Mark? Yes! We’re fine- and you won’t believe- Mark- Yes, Mark, we got the data.”

A pause. 

“Aren’t you even going to ask whether we’re okay? Seriously, I cannot believe you sometimes-”

“Ugh,” Alice said as her ancient Nokia fell into range as well. She silenced it and headed into the diner to ask for the key to the restroom.

Divya found his canvas duffel in the jumbled boot, between about two hundred feet of spare cabling, Eduardo’s four shoe options (all leather, all brown), Alice’s emergency stash of military grade MREs and about five hundred loose zip-ties that had shaken loose of their bulk bag.

“Sweatpants,” Divya said, mouth dry as he noted how wide Cameron had spread his legs to accommodate his long legs. He sat nearly as tall as Divya stood, putting them at eye level. Cameron’s eyes were a very pale blue.

“They’re my loosest pajamas, so they might just fit.” Divya carried on gamely. “None of us are anywhere near your size, as you’ve probably noticed.”

Cameron smirked slightly, something almost wolfish peering out from under his gentlemanly manners.

“I truly appreciate your hospitality,” Cameron said. His hand covered Divya’s as he took the clothing from him, his warm grip obviously gentled for Divya’s benefit.

“It’s really - no problem,” Divya said, determined not to stumble over his words. “Anyone would do the same, I’m sure. Look, Alice has the key. Go get cleaned up.”

“Most wouldn’t,” Cameron said, rising to attend to Alice’s impatient wave. “I might go so far as to say you have a princely grace, Lord Divya.”

Divya blinked. “Alright.” 

By the time Cameron ambled out of the restroom, Eduardo had nabbed them a windowside booth in the old style diner. He’d ordered bottomless coffee all round and had already started in on a slice of apple pie from the cabinet. 

Apparently Eduardo’s phone call with Zuckerberg had been about as infuriating to Eduardo as Divya typically found communicating with Mark. Divya could only hope it could spell the end for the two of them.

Of course, Eduardo was upset over it, which meant they were all going to be treated to his extensive verbal post-mortem. Alice had already her hands over her ears and luckily Divya was a master of selective deafness in the workplace.

Divya almost had to squeeze his eyes shut too and pray for the power of selective blindness as Cameron approached them. 

The grey marle sweatpants were moulded to every contour of his thighs and more besides. The shirt was skintight. 

Now that he’d washed his face and combed his hair, he looked the spitting image of Tyler. Even the overly tight clothing reminded Divya of Tyler’s close fitting and aerodynamic rowing kit. 

“Gods help me,” he muttered to himself as Cameron strode across the cracked tile floor, attracting waitresses like butterflies. 

Cameron slid into the seat next to Divya, fixing them all with a blinding smile. 

“What will you have, love?” A waitress piped up. It was miraculous, seeing as Divya had been waving desperately and ineffectually for more coffee for the last ten minutes.

“I will defer to the recommendation of young lord Divya,” Cameron said politely.

“Oh, playing at lords and ladies, how funny,” she chuckled, scratching at her paper already.

Divya sighed and ordered a couple of big breakfasts, heavy on the pancakes and eggs. “No oranges, no lemons,” he added automatically. “Tyler gets hives.”

“More coffee please.” Alice begged as the waitress sashayed away. 

Cameron stared at Divya in wonder. “You really do know my brother.”

Divya shifted uncomfortably. “If you really are twins, you’re probably allergic to citrus. And if you’re Tyler but you’ve lost your mind, you’re probably still allergic.”

Cameron grinned at that. “Fair deduction.”

Their food arrived swiftly and they dug in. Divya was a little suspicious that they’d been skipped up the queue on account of someone’s blonde, corn-fed physique, but the coffee kept coming, so he wasn’t going to complain. 

“Hey, Cameron,” Eduardo said, scraping up the last of his pie. “When’s the last time you saw your brother?” 

Cameron looked down at his hashbrowns mournfully. “I saw him not long ago, actually, but it was only in passing. Seven of your years now. He left home proper nearly ninety-eight years ago. It upset my parents immensely.”

Divya cut his pancakes a little rougher than he could have, then put a forkful into his mouth so he didn’t have to say anything.

Eduardo was frozen with his pie fork in midair.

“Ninety-eight, was that?” Alice checked, faintly.

Cameron nodded. “The fight is probably still a little fresh for him, but I’d like to see it all cleared up. We’re family, after all.”

“Family is important,” Eduardo said, finally, voice hollow, and Divya had no idea what he was chiming in for. 

They all knew perfectly well that the Saverins despised meteorology, despised Mark (fair call), and were probably watching the weather section of the news right now, actively praying that Eduardo would get struck by lightning, come to his senses, and find himself a nice quiet finance job. Preferably one that came with a nice obedient secretary (a girl one).

“Maybe he’ll be worried enough to come back when he hears you almost died in a hurricane,” Alice suggested, cheerfully.

Cameron gave her a look of confusion. “Died? No, Tyler is perfectly aware that I hold dominion over winds and storms. Directing the rain though, that might have got his back up.” 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Alice said around the rim of her coffee cup.

“The wind, the rain, rowing…electronics, storm data.” Eduardo was mumbling under his breath, counting something off on his fingers.

“I know Tyler went to the Tokyo Olympics,” Divya said. “Not sure what he got up to after that. Finance and rowing, I suppose. Unless he’s turned a bit of a corner and he’s now into nude storm chasing.”

“It happened to you,” Alice pointed out. “All of us, really.”

Divya shrugged. She wasn’t wrong. 

“That’s all very well,” Cameron shrugged. “We always had our personal interests. I’d just quite like him to attend his coronation, you see,” Cameron smiled.

Divya nearly spat his coffee into his eggs. “I’m sorry, his what?”

It was at least amusingto see that Cameron had the capacity to look startled. 

“He’s my father’s oldest child, you see,” Cameron said. 

“You’re twins,” Divya pointed out, helpfully, although he had to admit that Tyler had indeed displayed strong big brother energy at Harvard over the year they’d roomed together. Divya hadn’t hated it, as a youngest child far away from home for the first time, and unused to being left without backup.

“And my father is king of our homeland,” Cameron finished.

“Oh, wow,” Eduardo said. He was still idly stirring his tea, though it was already stone cold. “I mean, oh wow, Your Highness.”

Divya could see he was lapping up all this prince and king rubbish. No wonder Mark had him collared with little more than a sweet word every couple of weeks. He probably loved trashy romance novels and Twilight spin-offs too.

Ugh, he was over this.

“Thank you Eduardo,” Cameron said kindly. “So, as you might imagine, I am eager to speak with him,” Cameron went on, pushing another handful of potato into his mouth.

“Well, I suppose,” Divya said slowly, taking his phone out of his pocket and laying it on the table. He clicked the screen on to display a list of Contacts, the bottom of his list ranging from Saverin to Winklevoss to Zuckerberg. 

“I suppose we could just call him?” 

The ringtone sounded three times before someone picked up. The speakerphone made everything on the connection tinny, but Divya could swear he could hear the slap of water on concrete blocks. It was a sense memory that sent him right back to clutching a stopwatch for hours on the side of the old Harvard boathouse.

“Hello, Tyler Winklevoss?”

Cameron leaned in rapidly, planting his elbow directly in the middle of Divya’s last pancake.

“ _Brother-_.”

**Author's Note:**

> ever wanted to suffer and never stop suffering? you too can be alerted whenever I upload garbage! just go to my profile page and smash that subscribe button to receive horrible notifications straight to your inbox :D


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